Friday, February 9, 2018

Users of the satcom system do so at their own peril, as they would with any Internet access provider.

Discovery of cybersecurity vulnerabilities should emphasize rapid response to close the threat and a cooperative approach to sharing information privately, with an agreement to share enough information publicly to raise awareness of best practices.

Sunday, January 28, 2018

PP792 defines the form and fit characteristics of the Mark II Aviation Ku-band and Ka-band Satellite Communication (satcom) System, intended for installation in all types of commercial air transport aircraft. The satcom system described in PP792 represents the next evolution from the Mark I system defined in ARINC Characteristic 791, Part 1.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Equipment installed on aircraft must be designed and tested to be compatible with other equipment and with the airborne environment. Notably, radio frequency (RF) radiated emissions from one system may disrupt other aircraft systems such as radio receivers or present hazards to human health.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Flat-Panel antennas, particularly those with embedded amplifiers, provide the only pathway from an effective 18" aperture from a typical multi-gimbal antenna to as much as a 42" aperture. The first of these new antennas is the Gogo 2Ku made by ThinKom.

Project Paper 792 provides the form and fit of these second-generation satcom systems building on the baseline from ARINC 791 part 1 and using a common functional definition using ARINC 791 part 2 and Project Paper 848.

Friday, November 17, 2017

While it is possible to get 2x as marketing touts, the ThinKom (2Ku) antenna achieves about 1.5 times the spectral efficiency as a competing 2-axis antenna along typical routes. The ThinKom antenna may perform even better in the tropics, where the elevation angles may be highest.

The ThinKom antenna can operate without any performance reduction due to skew angles that may be encountered in the tropic regions, unlike a 2-axis antenna which may suffer severe degradation.

Theoretically, these same benefits await other flat-panel antennas. Practically, no other antenna has made public, legitimate claim to a design matching instantaneous bandwidth, efficiency, robustness, and scan loss, in the same size package. VICTS weakness is cost, weight, form-factor; all of which electronic phased array may have advantage.

Monday, November 13, 2017

Defense-in-Depth is a security concept that applies successive barriers to unauthorized access. Aeronautical communication includes a Commercial-off-the-Shelf (COTS) layer, a Network layer, and an Application layer.

Friday, October 27, 2017

Robert (Bob) Montgomery participated in the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Test program, conducted by NASA Dryden at Edwards in 1977. A Boeing Aerodynamicist, Bob conducted wind tunnel test to develop the control modifications as a result of carrying the Space Shuttle, and devised procedures so it could be safely separated.

Monday, October 23, 2017

Google is deploying a High Altitude Platform System (HAPS) in
the form of balloons that float around 20 km in altitude above a service area. Representative link budgets for both the LTE service and the air-ground unlicensed feeder link show that one balloon can deliver about 10 Mbps uplink and 20-25 Mbps downlink, on average, to LTE subscribers in an 80 km coverage area.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Air Transport Airplanes are faced with a monumental challenge to upgrade and embrace modern IP radio networks. Network security has risen mightily to challenge designers, mire down operations, and yet struggles to achieve its goal. Bandwidth management - Quality of Service - is done piece-meal, blind to real priority and performance goals. What will bring this all together?

Friday, September 1, 2017

Will air transport airplanes carrying many people for commercial purposes move to fully autonomous, no human pilot onboard?

The First Officer will turn into “Otto”, a
built-in feature of the next generation air transport airplane, and that the Captain
is here to stay. This is a logical progression from four to three (no Navigator) to two (no Flight Engineer) to one (no First Officer.)

Thursday, August 31, 2017

Aircraft fly from a departure airport to a destination airport along a route that is ideally a great circle connecting the two airports. Weather and other aircraft traffic, along with other considerations, can lead an airplane across a range of territory when flying the route from day to day.

Airplanes inherently favor flying wings-level while not maneuvering (as opposed to a slip.) This leads to greatest passenger satisfaction and can avoid troubling issues with fluids. As a result, the orientation of the airplane changes with respect to satellites operating along the geostationary orbit (GSO). The relative orientation between satellite and antenna leads to beam steering (azimuth, elevation, polarization skew) commands and also has an influence upon the airplane antenna performance.

Friday, March 17, 2017

Tom Kraft and Dave Allen share a beer moments after FANS was first certificated by the FAA (1995).

Not pictured were Tom Twiggs (Boeing project pilot) and

David Massey-Greene (QANTAS Chief Technical Pilot) on the other end of the table.

Sadly all four are gone

Tom Kraft died yesterday in an accident, at his home looking out on Hood Canal. His tragic passing comes less than a year after retiring from a 30+year career at the FAA, leading air traffic control into the digital age.

Monday, January 23, 2017

There is a difference in the reported actions (turn left) and the flightradar24.com data (turn right) after commencing a particular missed approach at Sochi in Sep, 2016. The FR24 data offers a climbing right turn, whereas avherald depicts a left turn direct.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Weather reports include forecast medium braking in wet snow, poor visibility, low ceilings with thunderstorms in the area, and a heavy crosswind. The airplane ended up on the right side of the runway, about 5,500 feet from the runway threshold. The crosswind was from the right, so the airplane deviated into the crosswind.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

LMI2933 approach to SKRG. The airplane position is plotted as a function of time (where it effectively flows to the left). The airplane initially arrived with conceivably enough fuel to complete the approach and landing safely. The airplane entered a holding pattern and on the back side of the second circuit departed the holding pattern with apparently total engine failure.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge opened to fanfare in July, 1940 having been constructed over the previous two years as a Public Works Administration Project. The bridge donned the name "galloping gertie" during construction, giving to its narrow profile and insufficient stiffness. The bridge famously collapsed on Nov. 7, 1940.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

The FCC issued Report and Order 04-165 on July 12, 2004. The Smart Antenna System (SAS), capable of forming multiple antenna beams, forged a pathway to frequency reuse and ultimately powers the unlicensed air-to-ground networks being developed by SmartSky Networks and Gogo. A review of the FCC 15-247 offers an understanding of an overall system architecture and performance estimates.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Gogo has announced an initiative to utilize unlicensed spectrum
to power an new Air-to-Ground (ATG) network.They profess a beam-forming network deployed to their 200 plus ground
stations will deliver 100 Mbps.I
believe that it is possible both Gogo and SmartSky are pursuing a similar
technology.The following is my analysis
on SmartSky, to which it may relate to Gogo ATG as well.

Monday, September 26, 2016

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) refers to a low power broadcast mode commonly referred to as a beacon (Bluetooth beacon, iBeacon). BLE broadcast is a limited protocol intended to be received only by proximate user devices (less than 100 meters). The beacon presents "effectively" a unique serial number. An application can lookup the location of a beacon by its serial number. An application can use the BLE beacon-derived position to trigger appropriate actions.

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast, or ADS-B, is revolutionizing Air Traffic Control. With some minor enhancements to the aircraft transponder, space-based ADS-B can become the cornerstone of an ICAO Autonomous Distress Tracking service, mandated for new aircraft starting in 2021. Such an installation may also allow the removal of one of the required Emergency Locator Transmitters. The use of satellite data link and navigation together with ADS-B are powering emerging Performance Based Navigation initiatives as well.

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Within minutes of the incident, Flightradar24.com published a time history of the ADS-B transponder transmissions from EK521. REVISED with a closer look at the last 32 seconds and adding in position data.REVISED with a summary plus a look at earlier arrivals wind effectsREVISED with the revelation that EK545, arriving ahead of EK521, had similar speed profileREVISED with Boeing 777 procedures at end

Friday, June 24, 2016

The Ku/Ka satcom subcommittee met the last two weeks to progress the latest AEEC standards and characterstics defining secure broadband connections and satcom equipment. Airbus expects to use PP848 for securing non-safety communications, bringing an unexpected urgency to completion of IPSec end-end functional definitions. PP848 will offer an optional means to segregate both passenger and non-safety aeronautical communications with a commercial broadband radio, such as Ku/Ka satcom. PP792 builds upon ARINC 791 to characterize emerging flat-panel antennas, especially phased array antennas, as well supplier-specific guidance for installing antenna systems using either 791 or PP792.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Beginning in 1978, aircraft data link emerged using a VHF network named ACARS (Aircraft Communication, Addressing and Reporting System). ACARS is a purpose-built, store-and-forward, character-based, messaging service. Within just over ten years, ACARS was extended to Inmarsat L-band satcom and HF radio. Five years later (1995) ACARS was delivering Air Traffic clearances. Today Iridium SBD (short-burst data) and even cellular radios communicate ACARS messages. How is the industry migrating to embrace and secure IP networks, and will ACARS ever go away? How are broadband radios being applied to support airplane health monitoring or EFB?

Saturday, May 21, 2016

The first and foremost response to any incident is rapid rescue and for sympathy to victims, survivors, and those that loved them.

Timely alerting and accurate aircraft position is the key to rapid response.

Moving beyond rescue becomes recovery. At this point the motivation is to collect the remains of those lost and as much of the airplane itself. Assembly of the airplane parts into a skeleton gives a foundation to check and verify various failure scenarios.

Regardless of the cause of catastrophe, airplane structure and systems are designed to be fault tolerant. Crash survivability is a paramount endeavor. Materials are evaluated for their contributions to post-crash fire and smoke. While the first objective is to understand what led to the catastrophe, just as important is to understand what can be improved to enhance prevention and survivability.

Friday, April 22, 2016

ThinKom and QEST are both promoting Ka-band flat panel antennas that use about a 25" aperture for receive. ARINC 791 provisions can support at least a 30" aperture, as shown by Gogo with 2Ku. Should a Ka antenna be built as big as possible, or is there any size that is "big enough"?

As time moves forward, will service levels going up (due to evolving user behaviors) outrace the cost of services going down (due to expanding capacity and lower costs to launch capacity)?

How valuable will a larger antenna be if trends run away from expectations?

Monday, April 4, 2016

Delivering a consistent Internet experience to an airline passenger demands adequate provisioning for the peak periods (highest contention ratios). It may take many satellites with overlapping coverage to aggregate sufficient capacity to meet the demands in any "hotpot".

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Some airlines offer passengers connectivity for free, others make the passengers pay, and in the end most will offer a mix of free and pay services. Will the airplane radio be able to meet the needs of the passenger? What about the radio network? How will that evolve over the next ten years? This feasibility analysis takes a look at the US market to reveal the technical requirements for a satellite network to meet the demand from a "typical" large US airline and from four such large US airlines.

Both Ku-band satellites and Ka-band satellites can serve any foreseeable airline passenger connectivity market. Because of concentrated demand, a single large US airline under the heaviest demand cannot be served from a single orbital slot by 2026. It takes a family of orbital slots with satellites offering overlapping coverage to aggregate the spectrum needed at the busiest airports. A family of satellites offers a robust and scalable solution to grow as demand grows, applying the newest technology incrementally along the way.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Every Internet access session is a unique experience generating a unique amount of usage (as measured broadly in MBytes). Light, average, heavy and future make up four categories. For each usage scenario, there are three use cases: all streaming, all Internet access, or split evenly between the two. The session duration and the amount of time off-line is another dimension. A short session will have less off-line time than a longer session.

Friday, March 18, 2016

Monday, March 7, 2016

Software defined payloads, beam-forming arrays, and unfurling antennas are just a few of the technologies to power the digital satellite revolution. The challenge is to reach a price point that is competitive with terrestrial alternatives and with enough capacity to serve the addressable markets.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

The first flight of the Boeing 727 began with a center-engine surge after takeoff. It settled down quickly. In any case, the tail-mounted configuration made engine-out handling much easier than wing-mounted engines. The outer leading-edge slats got stuck deployed (symmetric) as the aero loads overwhelmed the actuator. It was going to take more than a few hiccups to keep Lew Wallick and his crew from two plus hours inflight, including landing configuration stalls, using flaps 40, using less than 2000 feet of ground roll in the first landing - and a big thumbs-up! The first flight was on Feb. 9, 1963, fifty three years ago. I was almost five years old, living about 150 miles north in Vancouver and completely oblivious. Yet my own personal first flight would be on a 727 just six years later.

Sunday, February 28, 2016

Start with launching a machine into space and expect it to operate precisely while managing to harvest solar energy and hold attitude and position.

Add to the mix operating at frequencies that frankly are absurd.

Wide-band transponders got us this far, but their utility now is just a gateway to the future of spot beams.

Spot beams are formed by higher gain antennas with smaller beam widths than continental wide beam transponders. The beam width is a function of aperture and of frequency. A given aperture delivers a smaller beam width with higher frequency. A given frequency delivers a smaller beam width with a bigger aperture.

The last piece of the puzzle is the part that is in play, that of how to switch the information between the beams, and how many beams can you use?